Steel and Stone
by herworship429
Summary: She imagined he had also spent a lifetime playing at being the meek man, that some part of him had always been steel and stone, though he appeared to bow before weaker forces.


This is sort of an exercise for my fiction writing class (it was supposed to be using a prompt about managing transitions between thoughts and current action, also one about dropping characters right into the thick of things and telling back-story through flashbacks), but also Bruce/Natasha=my new favorite pairing, romantic or otherwise, and there are not nearly enough of them on here. The lovely Agent Romanoff is a hard one to write, so hopefully I didn't get too far off the mark with her character.

As always, I don't own anything Marvel or Avengers related (well, I have a couple of t-shirts, but other than that...). That's all Disney, or who/whatever owns the rights to the characters these days.

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_Fuck_.

It was the first thought that crossed her mind after they fell through the floor into the maintenance tunnel beneath the lab. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_, because she was trapped under fallen debris with Banner lying on the grate no more than four feet away, and if there was ever a stressful situation, this was sure as hell it. He was starting to move as she tried to talk him back to himself, tried keep him calm, but the grunts and growls she was hearing from his direction did not bode well for her. In all likelihood, the Other Guy was about to make an appearance, and he'd been angry with _her_ not two minutes ago, which probably meant he would soon be trying to smash into her into oblivion unless she got out of the vicinity, _immediately_.

"Bruce, listen to me, we're gonna be fine. I promise you, I will get you out of this," she said, trying to keep her voice even. He was writhing on the ground not two feet away, muscles on his arms and back bulging in impossible ways, bright green beginning to overtake his tan, and nothing was going to stop this, but she had to try. _Stay calm, don't show fear_, she thought. His new physique began splitting the seams on his shirt, tearing it to shreds. Somehow, that seemed to be the best metaphor for his entire situation; because it had struck her the moment she laid eyes on him in that shack in Calcutta that this man couldn't possibly be the most powerful being on the planet. Not this soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman, racing to help a stranger. Everything about Bruce Banner, from his clothing (impeccably clean and neat, and really, who wore jackets like that in such heat?), to his posture (always half-hunched over, his head down, arms folded, trying not to make eye contact), to the way he spoke (awkwardly, hesitantly, but politely) seemed designed to ensure he wasn't noticed. He did his very best to blend in and project weakness. But she was no stranger to such things, she who had spent a lifetime perfecting this act of meekness to conceal unexpected strength. And though it was the best she'd ever seen, his was still an act. He didn't even realize it, she could see, but she saw it in the way his spine straitened at a challenge, the way he had to make an effort to not look you directly in the eye. She saw it in the total change in mannerisms the moment you put him in his element. She hadn't known him before the accident, before the Other Guy had been dragged up from the dark depths of his psyche, but she imagined he had also spent a lifetime playing at being the meek man, that some part of him had always been steel and stone, though he appeared to bow before weaker forces. But just now, his stranger half ruled him, and for all her skills, Natasha Romanoff was absolutely no match for the Incredible Hulk.

He looked up at her, over a shoulder that was contorting and expanding, and she could see the torture that this was for him; she saw her own terror reflected in his eyes just before they turned from their usual dark brown to that horrible emerald, and even though she could almost hear him screaming "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" over and over, she couldn't help the fear that tasted like bile in the back of her throat. It came surging up unbidden, and she tugged on her trapped leg in utter desperation. She had to get out of here before he…

Her foot popped free, but it was too late. He was on his feet, smashing up a water heater or some other piece of equipment that set off a jet of steam into the air. Then he turned, a massive figure silhouetted in a swirl of mist, and looked strait at her. The sound of his roar echoed through the narrow passageway, and all pretense of trying to hide her fear was gone.

She turned and ran for her life.

She vaulted up the stairs as he tore them out from underneath her, kept running. _Run, run, run, run_, it was a steady chorus in her head that kept in time with her heartbeat as her feet pounded the catwalks. She started down the glass hallway between the labs, acutely aware that he was closing in behind her. He was fast; impossibly, inhumanly fast. Something that size shouldn't have been so damn quick, but in a few seconds he was on top of her, arm swinging almost carelessly, as if he hadn't been trying to hit her at all, and then she was flying through the air. She slammed into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. She looked up in time to see him advancing, enormous fist raised.

"Please, Bruce…" it came out as a whisper she was sure he couldn't hear. The look of confusion on his face suggested otherwise, a look that was almost an apology buried under his own fear. The Hulk was a thing of pure emotion, a caged animal striking out at his handlers, not understanding that they didn't want to hurt him, unable to distinguish friend from foe. But something about that whisper must've struck a chord somewhere, because he hesitated, just for a moment. Just long enough for a figure to come flying through the wall and smash into him. Demigod and monster both tumbled into the next wall, through it and into the hangar. And then he and Thor were gone, and she scrambled to her feet. Find a safe place, get away, then regroup. That mantra repeated itself in her mind as she navigated through the ship.

Ducking and twisting and jumping through the maze of half-collapsed corridors and scattered wreckage, it was almost like dancing… oh, she remembered dancing. It was one of the few things from her childhood that still drifted back to her, one of the few things she recalled clearly through the haze of training at the hands of the KGB. She'd loved the spinning most of all; she could do more pirouettes in a row than anyone else in her class, and she never got dizzy. Dancing was _easy_. It made her think of a time before she stopped feeling anything, a time when there had been dolls, and laughter, and dancing, and a pretty woman with red hair like hers who used to pick her up and spin her around in the air. But then _they_ came; then the red haired woman was gone in a flash and a scream, then the laughter and the dolls were gone too, and the dancing… they dancing was different. She sank to the floor, nestled in a space between a bulkhead and some equipment containers, knees drawn up to her chest, hands clutching them tightly to keep them from shaking. Suddenly, she wished she had never been sent to pick Banner up; when in that brief initial encounter had he so completely destroyed her defenses? When the mild-mannered doctor had suddenly slammed his fist onto the table and demanded the truth from her? For the split-second it took her to draw her weapon and signal the small army of SHIELD agents hidden outside, she had been certain that she was a dead woman; she'd been certain that he was about to transform, and really, what protection was her gun against that _thing_? But then, the quiet, unassuming man was back, with a sheepish smile and an apology, assuring her he had only been testing her, that he wasn't about to Hulk-out and kill them all… but no, that wasn't it. She'd been startled, scared even, but it wasn't the threat of the Hulk that consumed her. She didn't fear emerald eyes; it was the darker ones that scared her. Because Banner had this way of seeing right through you, of seeing all that you were and reflecting it back at you. She didn't fear the Hulk; she feared herself. She feared her past. She feared the childhood she lost, even as some part of her desperately craved it. She feared the monster in the mirror.

She shook her head, violently, all but slamming it into the wall behind her. What was wrong with her? She was one of the most dangerous people on the planet, and she was sitting there shaking like a helpless school girl, not because she was scared of some monster, but because she was absolutely, unreasonably terrified of a man she could have taken down without even breaking a sweat.

It took the call from Fury to get her to her feet again, off to find Barton, off to see if she could save her partner, just as he had once saved her. She shoved all thoughts of Bruce Banner and the Hulk to the back of her mind. Let the others deal with him. She had other problems.

Once it was over, once Loki had made his escape, she stayed with Barton, preoccupied with her semi-conscious partner. But, as incredulous as it was, her mind kept drifting back to Banner. The fear had all but faded, she realized. Maybe because it occurred to her that she had been thinking of him as a monster, when she should have been thinking of him as a person, no different from her. And once that thought occurred to her, she couldn't stop worrying about him, about both of them. She worried about the fate of the monster that had tried to kill her, who only wanted to be left alone, and she worried about the fate of the man with the crooked smile and the kind eyes, who had to wake up every time with the blood of something else's victims all over his hands.

Maybe they weren't so different, she and Banner. She knew what it was like to be unmade. She knew what it was like to have a monster inside of you, lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to escape and destroy everything you held dear. She had a ledger, after all. She imagined that he did too. She imagined that he knew the name of every person the Hulk had ever killed, intentionally or no; she could see him lying in bed at night, reciting that list from memory, like a prayer. She thought that it must have been what he was doing just before he'd put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, and that he must've hated himself even more after learning the new names that would need to be added to that list when the Other Guy spit the bullet out and took over. If he could have, she imagined he would want to meet with every victim's family, to explain, to apologize, to beg for forgiveness that he would never really be able to accept, because he would never be able to forgive himself.

That was just the sort of man he was.

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Reviews are appreciated, if you are so inclined. If not, whatever, the mere fact that you read this makes me happier than you will ever know :)


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